Brave Dames and Wimpettes: What Women Are Really Doing on Screen and Page [Audio Cassette]

Susan Isaacs's witty imagination has peopled the world with brave dames in films like Compromising Positions and full-bodied novels such as 1998's Red, White, and Blue. The slender and interestingly ornery essay Brave Dames and Wimpettes is part of the monthly Library of Contemporary Thought series, whose most fun title so far is Carl Hiaasen's Disney-bashing diatribe Team Rodent (now available on audiocassette).

So, what's a "brave dame"? "They're passionate about something besides passion," Isaacs writes. Take Jo March, Elizabeth Bennet, Katharine Hepburn, and Roz Russell, who prove "women are as competent and brave as the next guy." Her fave dame, Jane Eyre, "had high moral standards, stood up to injustice, and was willing to leave civilization and face the wild, even death, rather than do wrong."

Wimpettes, who outnumber dames in pop culture, believe in masochism, subterfuge, betrayal of women, and deriving identity from their man. "The world stops at the white picket of their fences.... larger causes--racial equality, justice--are left to the guys."

The book is a romp through books, movies, and TV, as Isaacs puts dozens of women in their place on the dame/wimpette spectrum. Anita Hill? Feh! "This über-wimpette testified before Congress how she endured vile sex talk from a superior rather than (1) report him for harassment ... or (2) tell him to shut the hell up." Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Frances McDormand in Fargo are dames; Ally McBeal and Anne Archer in Fatal Attraction are wimpettes. (Note, however, that Ethan Coen told Amazon.com McDormand is the bad guy in Fargo and Steve Buscemi the good guy.) Julia Roberts is a wimpette in My Best Friend's Wedding but a dame in Mystic Pizza and The Pelican Brief.

Ideally, Isaacs's book should start a lot of excellent arguments. Don't wimp out! --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Library of Contemporary Thought series (from which Dove will be releasing new audio titles throughout the spring) gives popular authors a chance to tackle intellectual subjects in a format aimed at a general audience. Isaacs, whose novels of female empowerment (Lily White, etc.) enjoy a healthy cult of faithful followers, examines the roles of women as depicted in books and movies, finding them too often "wounded" and "abused." She divides contemporary "female protagonists" into "brave dames" and "wimpettes." What's refreshing is Isaac's comfortably familiar take on popular culture, as reflected in her dissection of such movies as Serial Mom, Baby Boom and Terminator 2. She's also not afraid to venture candid opinions on fellow popular novelists such as Thomas Harris and James Patterson. Reader Swope replicates the author's easy breeziness, in nonpretentious and appealingly accessible tones. But, how does Isaacs stack up against formidable feminist precursors such as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Camille Paglia? Though no complete "wimpette," Isaacs fails to deliver deep insights or hardened convictions. She remains a popular entertainer at heart. Based on the 1999 Ballantine paperback. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A lively look at the role models provided by women in film and fiction, with unexpected exegeses from a bestselling novelist (Red, White, and Blue, 1998, etc.). L. Frank Baum's Dorothy and Jane Austen's Emmain both original and modern interpretationsare ``brave dames''; Sandra Bullock in Speed, although her character was the driver of the rampaging bus, and Anita Hill, testifying about long-past transgressions, are ``wimpettes.'' Even the feminist icons Thelma and Louise and biblical mother Eve get ambivalent reviews here. Think about it, says Isaacs: Thelma and Louise would rather drive off a cliff than take responsibility for their actions; Eve knuckled under to the serpent rather than take a stand in the cosmic battle between good and evil. Brave dames are ``passionate about something besides passion,'' are resilient, competent, moral, and ``a true friend.'' In literature, Jane Eyre is the bravest of dames, along with the spider Charlotte of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web. The author's TV heroines include Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena (although production values are seriously deficient, Isaacs admits); films offer Auntie Mame, G.I. Jane, and Clarice Starling of The Silence of the Lambs. Wimpettes, on the other hand, are invested in masochism, subterfuge, low ethical standards, and men who will give them identities. Holly Hunter's character in The Piano is a wimpette par excellenceshe betrays her husband (and daughter) because she ``just needs to get laid.'' Other mothers, sisters, and friends fare slightly better but fail the ``brave dames'' test because their lives are defined by men. Isaacs falters on her own test when she sets males as the standard in comparing buddy films, e.g., Midnight Cowboy vs. Thelma and Louise. A lightweight overview of women in film, fiction, and video, but the author offers a challenge: Look closely. Is driving a bus over the speed limit really an example of the best a woman can be? (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Why are Jane Eyre, Marge Simpson, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer "brave dames"? What makes Ally McBeal, Madame Bovary, and the good wife Beth from Fatal Attraction "wimpettes"?

In this thoroughly witty, incisive look at the role of women on screen and page, Susan Isaacs argues that assertive, ethical women characters are losing ground to wounded, shallow sisters who are driven by what she calls the articles of wimpette philosophy. (Article Eight: A wimpette looks to a man to give her an identity.) Although female roles today include lawyers like Ally McBeal and CEOs like Ronnie of Veronica's Closet, they are wimpettes nonetheless. A brave dame, on the other hand, is a dignified, three-dimensional hero who may care about men, home, and hearth, but also cares--and acts--passionately about something in the world beyond. Brave dames' stories range from mundane (Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show) to romantic (Francesca in The Horse Whisperer) to fantastic (Xena: Warrior Princess), but whatever they do, they care about justice and carry themselves with self-respect and decency. For a Really Brave Dame, think Frances McDormand as the tenacious, pregnant police chief in Fargo.

Isaacs's unmistakable love of fiction and film shines through even her most scathing wimpette assessments. In the end, she urges us to become "more thoughtful critics." The artist, she says, has the right to create whatever he or she pleases--and we have the right "to applaud or to yell, 'Hey, this stinks!' " If we do so, not only will fiction be improved, but so too might real life. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Susan Isaacs is the #1 bestselling author of Compromising Positions, Close Relations, Almost Paradise, Shining Through, Magic Hour, After All These Years, Lily White, and Red, White and Blue. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the International Association of Crime Writers. Isaacs is on the national board of Mystery Writers of America and is chair of its Committee on Free Expression. She lives on Long Island. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

OH, SURE, WE TALK A good game: Assertiveness. Power. Take back the night. Just do it. After all, we've been through a revolution in women's rights in the last thirty-odd years. Except even after all the fireworks, speeches, and marches, our female icons seem to me a pretty pathetic lot. Ditto for many of the characters we meet these days in movies, on TV, and in novels. There are not enough of those courageous spirits to reflect the times. I miss the Jane Eyres, my heroes, the brave dames I always admired and sometimes loved. Too many of today's female protagonists are still tremulous, willfully naive, self-absorbed, and self-pitying, queens of passive aggression. They are the Madame Bovarys. Wimpettes. And too many of us accept them as feminist heroes.

As no doubt you know, a wimp is someone weak and ineffectual. A wimp is the ninety-eight-pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his face by the pumped-up bully not merely because he is a physical lightweight, but because he is a moral one as well. Instead of trying to reason with the bully, or venturing a sock in the snoot, the wimp says, in essence: Do with me what you will.

A wimpette--a word I made up because I needed it--is a woman who is weak or ineffectual because she gives in, without a real fight, to the limits imposed on her by virtue of her gender. A wimpette deserves the diminutive at the end of her name. Her "no" rarely has an exclamation point. Her voice used to be pitched high--either nauseatingly perky or breathy--as if to underscore her utter lack of testosterone. She sounded like Minnie Mouse or Marilyn Monroe. Now she may simply be mute, like Holly Hunter as Ada in The Piano. Or she may in fact talk the talk, but she lacks the guts to walk the walk: A wimpette may tell us, with words or grimaces, "Ooh, ooh, I'm trying so hard!" yet she never quite manages to rise above her own fragility, be it psychic or somatic--unless she is helped by a man. At her worst the wimpette puts the blame for her failures on society, on men, on her mother. At her best she is feisty or spunky--never strong.

To be fair, a woman often must struggle harder than a man simply because more gender limits are imposed on her than on any man. So? Just because life may be tough, should a woman simply accept what comes her way? Most of the women I know do not, and I bet most of those you know don't, either.

Nevertheless, our media--our journalism, our art--abound with wounded women. We seem to have lost our sturdy immigrant past, forgotten that we once had strong and gallant women heroes such as the title character in Willa Cather's My Antonia. We are descendants of brave dames like these, not a nation of weaklings. Yet eighty-one years after Antonia, we are offered tales of women who have been battered. Who have been violated, molested, or date-raped. Who have been sexually harassed by swinish co-workers. Whose husbands have left them (generally for younger, juicier women) high, dry, and impoverished. Who are debilitated by obscure ailments. Who are simply sick to death of life.

Are some of these sad narratives stories of authentic victims? Of course. Read or watch The Color Purple or Sophie's Choice. Read our first literature, the Bible. Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob, was no wimpette; she was a genuine victim. She was raped. She was powerless. That is, there was nothing she could do to prevent the violence against her. So some victims are genuine victims. The physical pain of domestic violence is real pain. So is the psychic pain of clinical depression.

But are a fair number of these tales actually weepies about women who could have fought for themselves and chose not to? Damn right. A damsel-in-distress, movie-of-the-week mentality has infected our film and fiction. Despite the most recent revolution in women's rights, we are still being portrayed as the gender of the quivering lower lip. Our art, not our lives, too often presents us as the demonstrably weaker sex. Worse, instead of seeing suffering as a condition that morally requires us to respond with pity and aid, too many of us have come to believe that being a victim is somehow noble. That kind of thinking leads to a flowering of wimpettes.

Look, who are among this decade's female demigods? Dead Diana. In life, she certainly did speak out for noble causes, but her real vocation was getting friends and journalists to headline her agonies--bulimia, suicide attempts, anguish inflicted by a faithless husband and censorious in-laws--and to report on her attempts at recovery, from standard psychotherapy to all manner of New Age drivel to pumping iron at a gym. Extra! Extra! She got the whole world to read all about it. (That the whole world included her young sons did not slow down the "people's princess" one whit.)

For those cerebral types who found Diana too featherbrained to venerate, there was attorney and Yale Law School alumna Anita Hill to revere. This über wimpette testified before Congress how she endured vile sex talk from a superior rather than (1) report him for harassment through established procedures or (2) tell him to shut the hell up.

This canonization of female degradation and malaise is dangerous. It depreciates the suffering of women who truly are victims. It degrades women's views of themselves. Yet the mantle of victimization seems so chic that I expect to see it on the cover of Vogue. Everyone wants to try it on. There is an often-cited, unattributed statistic wafting in the media ether and on college campuses these days that a fourth of all American women have been abused or sexually assaulted. Does "abused" mean physically battered? Does it refer to a sex act consummated without a woman's explicit verbal consent but with her implicit agreement? Or is it about something nasty in between? We don't know, yet we renounce skepticism and rush to outrage.

I cannot understand why our art does not reflect the strong women I meet every day. Now, I'm not saying the dames I know--my friends, my colleagues, my neighbors--are invincible. But pound for pound, they are heartier, more high-spirited, more valorous, and infinitely less frivolous than so many wimpettes we see today in literature, film, and television. Their paradigmatic experience is neither forcible violation nor abuse. Yes, their lives are sometimes tough, but in the worst of times--in the face of illness, death, economic worries, family traumas--they show amazing resilience. I am not talking about Cabinet-level women: I'm talking about nursery school teachers, poets, secretaries, interior decorators, community volunteers. Ordinary citizens. And while we're on the subject, how come when women on-screen or in books do manage to act assertively, as in Thelma and Louise and What's Love Got to Do with It, they are often pitted against one specific evil--bad men? The cosmos gets reduced to gender warfare.

Turn on the TV, read a book, or go to a movie, and you'll find hurt women disturbingly prominent in our art. This worries me. The Big Lie repeated often enough becomes truth. I, for one, don't want to be assumed to be weak or wounded. Further, art not only reflects society, it is society's collective memory: It can become history the way a Supreme Court decision does, by ultimately changing the minds--or at least the behavior--of Americans. Do we want our descendants to look back at the women who bore them as wimpettes? Worse, do we want them to inherit the belief that women are inherently less stalwart than men?

The wimpette's pain may be real, but she does little or nothing to avert it. She can act, but chooses not to. Her unspoken credo is this: Women are helpless or close to it. They don't act independently; they react to men and frequently take their identities from the men in their lives. When they do act bravely, it is, even today, often to defend husband, home, hearth, and children, or the community in which said husband, home, and so forth are set. Anne Archer's Beth in Fatal Attraction is a prime example. For many wimpettes, the world stops at the white pickets of their fences; they lack the curiosity to look past the spaces between the pickets at the world beyond because they are so self-involved. Larger causes--racial equality, justice--are left to the guys.

Now, while the Bible is still open: The culture that gave rise to the recording of the story of Genesis might have believed as a general proposition that women are weak. But Eve did not have to be. One of the many points of the story of the Temptation is that Eve could have said no. Yes, the serpent was persuasive, and the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge must indeed have seemed exceedingly succulent. However, Eve had neither the stature nor the will to even try to fight a cosmic battle. The mother of us all was, sadly, a wimpette.

From Eve on, there have always been women in literature who simply could not cope. Some were real victims, some wimpettes. Of the protagonists who even tried to break the mold, many came to a bad end or died, including Anna Karenina, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, and Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, to name just a few.

Since those times, however, we've had the suffragette movement, the march of women out of the home into the workplace during the wartime forties, and the liberation movement of the sixties and seventies. Yet we still have had a surprising amount of fiction--some of high literary merit, such as Anna Quindlen's Black and Blue, Stephen King's Rose Madder, and Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina--that is premised on women suffering under the tyranny of men. (Some is simplistic, cheap victim fiction, third-rate stuff, like the spate of quasiliterate whodunits about serial killers that feature women being tortured, raped, and/or murdered, all attempting--and failing--to emulate The Silence of the Lambs. But that novel featured the valiant and virtuous Clarice Starling, as well as author Thomas Harris's brilliant, harrowing insights into the psyche of a maniac. What is literature in Silence ... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Described on the cover as a "witty, incisive look at the role of women on screen and page," this is actually a catalog of famous novels, movies and TV shows, with Isaacs's verdicts on whether the female characters are "Brave Dames" (like Scarlett O'Hara) or "Wimpettes" (like Thelma and Louise). As a list of notable fictional women, it's mildly entertaining, but incomplete. Tracy Brooks Swope does little to enliven the proceedings. She possesses the deep voice Isaacs requires of a "Brave Dame," but her monotonous reading lacks color, variety and vitality. The performance also includes more than its share of mispronunciations and misreadings. S.P. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine